Steve Jobs: Ten Secrets for Great Presentations

Holy Smokes, Bullets Kill! (And Other Presentation Tips) Before planning your presentation, according to Carmine Gallo, it is critical to know the question that matters most to your audience: "Why should I care?"1 You need to think about how to inspire your audience. Simply trying to sell them something doesn't cut it. As Carmine writes, "Your widget doesn't inspire me. Show me how your widget improves my life, and you've won me over."2 Here are Steve Jobs' ten secrets for insanely great presentations.3 Plan in analog. Brainstorm in advance of creating your presentation. You can use pen and paper, a whiteboard or, better yet, a mind map. DO NOT use PowerPoint®to create your presentation—it will be used only in the final step! (More on this later.) Create Twitter-friendly headlines. Describe your product or service in 140 characters or less. Preferably, a lot less. Steve introduced the MacBook Air® as simply, "The world's thinnest notebook." About the first-generation iPod®, he tweeted: "It's one thousand songs in your pocket." Introduce the villain. Steve saw a presentation as a three-act play that must tell a story, but what is a story without a hero and a villain? Before he introduced the famous 1984 ad to a group of Apple salespeople, he set the stage, casting "Big Blue" as Goliath. "IBM wants it all," he warned, and defiantly asserted that only Apple stoodin its way. His dramatic moment sent the crowd into frenzy. While the villain doesn't have to be a competitor, it must be a common foe that your audience will want to join with you in rallying against. Your product is then revealed as the conquering hero. Create visual slides. As Carmine writes, "Neuroscientists are finding that the best way to communicate information is through text and pictures, not text alone." As for bullet points, Steve never, ever, used them and neither should you. Carmine has a section in her book titled, "Bullets Kill" that describes why you should avoid using PowerPoint to create your presentation. "Think about what happens when you open PowerPoint. A blank-format slide appears that contains space for words—a title and subtitle. This presents a problem. There are very few words in a Steve Jobs presentation. Now think about the first thing you see in the drop-down menu under Format: Bullets & Numbering. This leads to the second problem. There are no bullet points in a Steve Jobs presentation. The software itself forces you to create a template that represents the exact opposite of what you need to speak like Steve!"4 Take a look at the following comparison of bullet-point slides compared to the same information, presented visually. Practice, a lot. Most people read their presentations off of their PowerPoint slides. This is why most presentations are boring. Steve treated every slide as piece of poetry and every presentation as a theatrical event. He wasn't a natural presenter; he worked very hard at it. Rehearse your presentation, toss the script and look at your audience. Practice at making it look effortless. Obey the ten-minute rule. It's a scientific fact that the brain gets tired after ten minutes. Steve's presentations typically lasted an hour and a half. He would break them up into short intervals of ten minutes or less by interspersing videos, demonstrations, or guest speakers. Don't let your audience get tired or you'll lose them. A great way to keep your audience's attention when presenting information is though sequencing, which builds the story within a visual one step at a time, making the information much easier to digest. Dress up your numbers. We often deal with large numbers or data that an audience can't comprehend without context. Breaking them down and presenting numbers visually can overcome this. Notice how much more effectively the chart below illustrates sales figures as opposed to a matrix of data. Reveal a 'holy smokes!' moment. Maya Angelou said, "People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them fe el." Steve Jobs always produced a memorable moment in a pre sentation. When he introduced the MacBook Air, he told his a udience that while everyone had seen manila envelopes floating around the office, what they had never seen was someone pulling a notebook computer out of one—which is precisely what he did. The audience went wild and images of that moment remain emblazoned in people's minds four years later. Sell dreams, not products. When it looked at the iPod, the world saw a music player. What Steve Jobs saw was a tool to enrich people's lives. Howard Schultz of Starbucks didn't have a passion to sell coffee; his vision was to create an experience: a 'third place' between home and work where people would want to gather. The dream met the customer's need and the product sales took care of itself. Have fun! When was the last time you saw someone enjoying giving a presentation? Steve Jobs had fun in every keynote. He made jokes at his own expense. While most people give presentations to deliver information, Steve always created an experience that his audience would enjoy and remember. Most importantly, he sold them on becoming a part of his dream, not his product.

How to increase Youtube views

Yes, watching paint dry can fetch plenty of Web views

The Times paid two online video-promotion sites to generate tens of thousands of views for a nearly two-minute video of a streak of blue paint drying.

By Jack Leonard and David Sarno, Los Angeles Times
10:47 PM PST, March 3, 2012

Who says no one wants to watch paint dry?

In an effort to find out how easy it is to buy YouTube views, The Times posted two identical videos of a wet streak of blue children's paint. The 1-minute 47-second videos were given similar titles with deliberately misspelled words to lower the chances they'd be found in regular searches by Web users. One was uploaded to reporter Jack Leonard's YouTube account and the other to reporter David Sarno's.

The Times randomly chose a pair of websites touting quick and cheap views for any video and purchased 40,000 views for Leonard's clip. WorkingYouTubeViews.com charged $46 for 20,000 views; IncreaseYouTubeViews.com was paid $57 for another 20,000.

After eight days, the views on Leonard's video had hit 60,000 — far more than had been paid for. Sarno's video had only 13 views.

Emails sent to the two sites seeking explanations were unreturned. Information embedded in Leonard's video showed that thousands of the views originated on Facebook, suggesting the view boosters might have bought cheap ads on the social network to shotgun the view out to users, a small percentage of whom might have clicked.

Google searches showed that the video had been embedded on a yoga website in the United Kingdom and on a separate video-sharing site registered in Ulan Bator, Mongolia. It was not clear how much traffic those sites generated.

jack.leonard@latimes.com

david.sarno@latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Engineering Flow Chart

Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms? by Michael Hiltzik

Who really benefits from putting high-tech gadgets in classrooms?

How much genuine value is there in fancy educational electronics? Don't let companies or politicians fool you.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, left, and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski speak at a Digital Learning Day event sponsored in part by Google, Comcast, AT&T and Intel. (Mark Wilson, Getty Images / February 5, 2012)

By Michael Hiltzik

 

February 4, 2012

Something sounded familiar last week when I heard U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski make a huge pitch for infusing digital technology into America's classrooms.

Every schoolchild should have a laptop, they said. Because in the near future, textbooks will be a thing of the past.

• Michael Hiltzik
• 

Where had I heard that before? So I did a bit of research, and found it. The quote I recalled was, "Books will soon be obsolete in the schools.... Our school system will be completely changed in 10 years."

The revolutionary technology being heralded in that statement wasn't the Internet or the laptop, but the motion picture. The year was 1913, and the speaker, Thomas Edison, was referring to the prospect of replacing book learning with instruction via the moving image.

He was talking through his hat then, every bit as much as Duncan and Genachowski are talking through theirs now.

Here's another similarity: The push for advanced technology in the schoolroom then and now was driven by commercial, not pedagogical, considerations. As an inventor of motion picture technology, Edison stood to profit from its widespread application. And the leading promoter of the replacement of paper textbooks by e-books and electronic devices today is Apple, which announced at a media event last month that it dreams of a world in which every pupil reads textbooks on an iPad or a Mac.

That should tell you that the nirvana sketched out by Duncan and Genachowski at last week's Digital Learning Day town hall was erected upon a sizable foundation of commercially processed claptrap. Not only did Genachowski in his prepared remarks give a special shout out to Apple and the iPad, but the event's roster of co-sponsors included Google, Comcast, AT&T, Intel and other companies hoping to see their investments in Internet or educational technologies pay off.

How much genuine value is there in fancy educational electronics? Listen to what the experts say.

"The media you use make no difference at all to learning," says Richard E. Clark, director of the Center for Cognitive Technology at USC. "Not one dang bit. And the evidence has been around for more than 50 years."

Almost every generation has been subjected in its formative years to some "groundbreaking" pedagogical technology. In the '60s and '70s, "instructional TV was going to revolutionize everything," recalls Thomas C. Reeves, an instructional technology expert at the University of Georgia. "But the notion that a good teacher would be just as effective on videotape is not the case."

Many would-be educational innovators treat technology as an end-all and be-all, making no effort to figure out how to integrate it into the classroom. "Computers, in and of themselves, do very little to aid learning," Gavriel Salomon of the University of Haifa and David Perkins of Harvard observed in 1996. Placing them in the classroom "does not automatically inspire teachers to rethink their teaching or students to adopt new modes of learning."

At last week's dog-and-pony show, Duncan bemoaned how the U.S. is being outpaced in educational technology by countries such as South Korea and even Uruguay. ("We have to move from being a laggard to a leader" was his sound bite.)

Does Duncan ever read his own agency's material? In 2009, the Education Department released a study of whether math and reading software helped student achievement in first, fourth, and sixth grades, based on testing in hundreds of classrooms. The study found that the difference in test scores between the software-using classes and the control group was "not statistically different from zero." In sixth-grade math, students who used software got lower test scores — and the effect got significantly worse in the second year of use.

The aspect of all this innovative change that got the least attention from Duncan and Genachowski was how school districts are supposed to pay for it.

It's great to suggest that every student should be equipped with a laptop or given 24/7 access to Wi-Fi, but shouldn't our federal bureaucrats figure out how to stem the tidal wave of layoffs in the teaching ranks and unrelenting cutbacks in school programs and maintenance budgets first? School districts can't afford to buy enough textbooks for their pupils, but they're supposed to equip every one of them with a $500 iPad?

"There are two big lies the educational technology industry tells," says Reeves. "One, you can replace the teacher. Two, you'll save money in the process. Neither is borne out."

Apple has become a major purveyor of the mythology of the high-tech classroom. "Education is deep in our DNA," declared Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing chief, at its Jan. 19 education event. "We're finding that as students are starting to be introduced to iPad and learning, some really remarkable things are happening."

If you say so, Phil. But it's proper to point out the downside to one great innovation Schiller touted, a desktop publishing app called iBooks Author. The app is free, and plainly can help users create visually striking textbooks. But buried in the user license is a rule that if you sell a product created with iBooks Author, you can sell it only through Apple's iBookstore, and Apple will keep 30% of the purchase price. (Also, your full-featured iBook will be readable only on an Apple device such as an iPad.)

Among tech pundits, the reaction to this unusual restriction has ranged from citing its "unprecedented audacity" to calling it "mind-bogglingly greedy and evil." Apple won't comment for the record on the uproar. Whatever you think of it, the rule makes clear that Apple's interest in educational innovation is distinctly mercantile. But that didn't keep Genachowski from praising Apple's education initiative as an "important step." (Perhaps he meant a step toward enhanced profitability.)

Of course Apple draped its new business initiative in all sorts of Steve Jobsian pixie dust, as if it's all about revolutionizing education. The company's most amusing claim is that iPads are somehow more "durable" than textbooks and therefore more affordable, over time. Its website weeps copious crocodile tears over the sad fate of textbooks — "as books are passed along from one student to the next, they get more highlighted, dog-eared, tattered and worn." Yet as James Kendrick of ZDNet reports, school administrators who have handed laptops out to students to take home say the devices get beaten nearly to death in no time. The reality is obvious: Drop a biology textbook on a floor, you pick it up. Drop an iPad, you'll be sweeping it up.

Some digital textbooks may have advantages over their paper cousins. Well-produced multimedia features can improve students' understanding of difficult or recondite concepts. But there's a fine line between an enhancement and a distraction, and if textbook producers are using movies and 3-D animations to paper over the absence of serious research in their work, that's not progress.

Nor is it a given that e-books will be cheaper than bound books, especially when the cost of the reading devices is factored in. Apple tries to entice schools to buy iPads in blocks of 10 by offering a lavish discount of, well, $20 per unit. They still cost $479 each. The company also provides a bulk discount on extended warranties for the device, but — surprise! — it doesn't cover accidental damage from drops or spills.

Apple and its government mouthpieces speak highly of the ability to feed constant updates to digital textbooks so they never go out of date. But that's relevant to a rather small subset of schoolbooks such as those dealing with the leading edge of certain sciences — though I'm not sure how many K-12 pupils are immersed in advanced subjects such as quantum mechanics or string theory. The standard text of "Romeo and Juliet," on the other hand, has been pretty well locked down since 1599.

There's certainly an important role for technology in the classroom. And the U.S. won't benefit if students in poor neighborhoods fall further behind their middle-class or affluent peers in access to broadband Internet connectivity or computers. But mindless servility to technology for its own sake, which is what Duncan and Genachowski are promoting on behalf of self-interested companies like Apple, will make things worse, not better.

That's because it distracts from and sucks money away from the most important goal, which is maintaining good teaching practices and employing good teachers in the classroom. What's scary about the recent presentation by Duncan and Genachowski is that it shows that for all their supposed experience and expertise, they've bought snake oil. They're simply trying to rebottle it for us as the elixir of the gods.

Michael Hiltzik's column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. Reach him at mhiltzik@latimes.com, read past columns at latimes.com/hiltzik, check out facebook.com/hiltzik and follow @latimeshiltzik on Twitter.

 

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times

Power tools that will pay for themselves, by Bob Tedeschi

The Guilt-Free Handyman Shopping Spree

By BOB TEDESCHI

PUT a new tool in the hands of some people, guys especially, and they become giddy at the prospect of all the jobs they can now do. For me, it means one more thing to feel stupid about, and one less excuse to blow off a project that surely could wait another week. 

Part of me would like to become that other guy, but such a conversion requires a bit of cash and a bigger measure of wisdom. 

The very basic set of tools I own is good for home repairs and maintenance, and some simple work, like installing shelves or a shower head. But are there other tools — better tools — that would inspire me to chase down ambitious projects instead of fleeing them? 

I put the question to three home improvement specialists: Gordon Bock, an author of “The Vintage House” (W. W. Norton) and former editor in chief of Old House Journal; Duo Dickinson, an architect and the author of “Staying Put” (Taunton), a manual on home remodeling; and Bob Vila, whose syndicated home improvement series jump-started a genre, and whose videos can now be seen at BobVila.com. 

What I needed, they told me, was a good set of aspirational tools. But a set like that leans heavily on the power-tools category, and could therefore make your bank account tilt. 

Though, as Mr. Bock put it, “good tools don’t cost — they pay for themselves in improved work and long service.” 

If a set of basic tools (hammer, handsaw, jigsaw, drill, screwdriver, level, tape measure, pliers, Vise-Grips, adjustable wrench and socket wrenches) costs around $150, the next step up costs roughly double that. 

Nevertheless, within hours of adding the 10 other items they recommended to my workshop, I had taken on a door-modification project that I’d ignored for a full decade, and I completed it in two hours. Had I paid a carpenter for the work, it might have cost as much as buying all of those tools.

At Mr. Bock’s recommendation, the first item on my list of new tools was an 18-volt cordless drill.

“It’s almost de rigueur,” he said, and the tools have improved in recent years. 

“It used to be that 24 volts was the sweet spot for a tool with power and durability,” Mr. Bock said. “But now you can get the same thing in a smaller package. They’re just incredible.” 

You can buy one for around $60, but my panelists strongly advised me to get one with a spare battery, so I wouldn’t have to worry about losing power midway through a project. Extra rechargeable batteries cost about $30. 

What’s the best way to shop for a drill? Mr. Vila said that most builders and carpenters choose the major brands carried at home improvement specialty stores and local hardware retailers. Bosch, DeWalt, Hitachi, Makita, Skil and Craftsman, he said, are good ones to consider. 

A battery-powered circular saw is another good thing to have, Mr. Bock said, “especially if you’re outside working on a fence or up on a roof, where you don’t want to drag a cord.” 

I built a picket fence in August a few years back, and wasted a good bit of arm strength and a few pints of sweat sawing off the tops of posts. Back then, I’d have killed for a cordless circular saw.

Like cordless drills, battery-powered circular saws start at around $60 for models with 5 ½-inch blades, which will handle most basic tasks. The least expensive 6 ½-inch models sell for about $100.

Mr. Bock’s next recommendation was slightly more controversial. He suggested buying the cordless version of a tool I’d long coveted for its destructive potential: a reciprocating saw. Also known by one of its brand names, a Sawzall, it’s good for demolition and for cutting through walls. 

Or body parts, Mr. Dickinson noted. 

“It’s the greatest tool in America, and second only to chainsaws as the most dangerous,” he said.

“I know my limits,” Mr. Dickinson continued. “If I’m doing a project at home, it’s usually before or after work, when I’m tired, or distracted, and I don’t trust myself with anything dangerous.”

Aside from severing a finger, Mr. Dickinson said, reciprocating saw users might be tempted to blindly cut through a wall containing live wires. 

Duly spooked, I sought a tiebreaker. 

Mr. Vila came down on the side of Team Sawzall. 

Envisioning my next credit-card statement, I felt a good sweat coming on. But Mr. Vila said I could buy a combination cordless kit with a drill and circular and reciprocating saws for $200. 

It was the first time someone from the construction industry gave me an estimate that was actually high. An 18-volt tool kit from Ryobi, with a flashlight, drill, 5 ½-inch circular saw and reciprocating saw costs about $150. The kit even includes a spare battery. 

I bought it, and pledged never to pick up the saws without heeding Mr. Dickinson’s warning.

Mr. Dickinson, who runs a firm in Connecticut, chose as his top tool recommendation a multipiece drilling-and-driving set, which vastly expands the utility of a cordless drill. 

“This thing has changed my life,” he said. “I can be fearless when I attack a job, because no matter what I might need, it’s all here.” 

His set is a DeWalt 80-piece drill-and-drive set, which sells for about $30 and includes nut-setters, roughly 20 drill bits and more than 50 screw-driving tips. For those with more specialized woodworking needs, Ryobi sells a 90-piece drill-and-drive set that includes tools for boring and circular cuts. 

With a multipiece kit, Mr. Dickinson said, you can choose bits of different sizes and shapes that come in handy if, for instance, you are trying to remove a screw that someone stripped as it was put in place. 

In other words, I’ll be able to deal with all of the screws I previously wrecked, for lack of the proper screwdriver. It will also help replace some of the driver bits that mysteriously disappeared the last time my teenage son used them. 

If I’m going to embark on more ambitious home improvement projects, I should resign myself to making a mess of the workspace. 

On this front, Mr. Bock made a nice recommendation: a wet-dry vacuum, more commonly known as a Shop-Vac. They’re far less expensive than I’d previously imagined (a Ridgid six-gallon model is $47), and they’ll suck up substances that would destroy a typical vacuum. 

“You don’t think of it as a tool,” he said, “but you get addicted to it.” 

Slightly less addictive is the noise it generates, which is like what you’d hear if you were strapped to the deck of an aircraft carrier. 

Grab some earmuffs, Mr. Bock suggested (ones by MSA Safety Works cost around $18), or a good set of earplugs (3M TEKK Protection, $3 for seven pairs), if you can wear them comfortably. 

Also on the list of low-tech tools were a few that can help save homeowners from writing big checks to contractors. 

Mr. Vila suggested an auger for unclogging toilets or drains. “Plumbers charge such enormous amounts that for $15 you might be able to do a serious unclogging that saves you a lot of dough,” he said. 

I found none for $15, but I did find a three-foot Ridgid toilet auger that cost about $34, and a six-foot model that was $50. Both would pay for themselves in the time it would take a plumber to walk from his truck to your front door. 

Another of Mr. Vila’s favorite money-saving gadgets is a spline ($5 for a Home Depot brand), which is a specialty tool for replacing screens. “Once you get the hang of it, it’s easy,” he said. “And if you have someone else do it for you, it triples the cost.” 

Mr. Vila suggested a set of wire strippers as well ($16 for Klein Tools wire strippers). “If you’ve ever tried to rewire an old lamp, they’re very handy,” he said. 

He also recommended a hatchet. But as I studied a shelf filled with shiny, expensive blades, I backed into a display for a Workmate portable workbench ($30) and got that instead. 

I can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to fix a bike as it squirms atop a garbage can, or pushed a circular saw within centimeters of the pavement, simply for lack of a proper work surface.

I also can’t count the number of jobs I’ve avoided for the same reason. I grabbed a Workmate and the rest of my new tools, and headed home for my long-overdue door-modification project. 

The door belongs to a guest bathroom, and since it is almost an inch and a half too short for the doorway, people who use the bathroom have little aural privacy. 

I pulled the door from its hinges, steadied it on the Workmate (which took about a half-hour to assemble), drove to the lumberyard for a $2 piece of wood, drilled pilot holes in the wood, added some wood glue and secured the piece with a few screws. 

It was too big by a hair, so I trimmed the piece with the circular saw, and the deed was done. At last.

Next to that door, the most vexing characteristic of my house is the lack of light on the eastern side, which makes my office cavelike in the morning. A window would make a huge difference. All I need is a framing tutorial and something to cut a hole through wallboard, studs and aluminum siding.

I think I’ve got just the tool for the job.

 

Storage Options for Tools

 

AN ambitious set of tools can help you take on projects you once feared, but only if you keep track of your new equipment. Construction industry veterans have developed a long list of home-brewed solutions for organizing their tools and supplies. 

Duo Dickinson, author of “Staying Put,” a home renovation book, recently bought an angler’s tackle box to hold loose items. “All the respectable D.I.Y. guys have one,” he said. “In a world with Ikea, you find yourself with all sorts of hardware you have no use for whatsoever. But you don’t want to throw it away, either. Now you have a place to store all this stuff.” 

Toolboxes are usually big enough to contain the old-school arsenal, but if your arsenal includes power tools, a cheaper and more versatile alternative is a five-gallon bucket. Manufacturers like Bucket Boss and others make sleeves that slip onto buckets, and have multiple pockets for tools and supplies (the Bucket Boss 56 costs around $30). Power tools can fit into the bucket, while the supporting cast fits in elsewhere.

What is the best distance for watching a 1080P HDTV set?

The devil in the details

Consumer electronics: Changes in technology mean that choosing a big-screen television has become more complicated than ever. Should you pay extra for 1080p resolution, LED backlighting or 3D? We crunch the numbers

 

Dec 3rd 2011 | from the print edition of the Economist

 

IF YOU have not gone shopping for a new television set for quite a while, enough has changed to require some serious thought. So before splurging on a new high-definition television (HDTV) set, it is worth considering which features make sense and which do not.

Start with the viewing angles available in the room that will be used. THX, a technical standards-setter for the video and audio industries, requires the back row of seats in a home theatre to have at least a 26° viewing angle from one edge of the screen to the other. Seats nearest the screen should have a viewing angle of no more than 36°. These subtended angles correspond to a viewing distance of roughly 2.2 times the screen width at the back row of the seating, down to 1.5 times the screen width at the front. Within these limits, viewers should be able to enjoy the most immersive experience.

The question, then, is how to relate viewing distance to a person’s visual acuity. In other words, what is the maximum distance beyond which some picture detail is lost because of the eye’s limitations? Visual acuity indicates the angular size of the smallest detail a person’s visual system can resolve. Saying that someone has 20/20 vision (6/6 in metric terms) means that they can resolve a spatial pattern (a letter of the alphabet, say) in which each element subtends an angle of one minute of arc when viewed from a distance of 20 feet (six metres).

In other words, a person with 20/20 sight should, in normal lighting conditions, be able to identify two points that are 0.07 of an inch (1.77mm) apart from a distance of 20 feet. Twenty feet is taken because, as far as the eye is concerned, it is in effect infinity. Beyond this distance, some of the detail in the picture can no longer be resolved by the conical receptor cells in the retina of the eye. It will simply blend into the background instead of being seen as a distinct feature. Thus, it is a waste to make individual pixels—the tiniest elements in a display—smaller than 1.77mm across when viewed from 20 feet.

The problem with viewing images on a television screen—especially the “progressively scanned” 1080p HDTV sets in use today—is that most people sit too far back. At the typical distance of nine feet, a 1080p HDTV set (with a screen 1,920 pixels wide and 1,080 pixels high) needs to be at least 69 inches across (measured diagonally) if viewers are to see all the detail it offers. To see all the detail on a 32-inch set with 1080p resolution means sitting a little over four feet from the screen—great for video-gaming on your own, but hardly conducive to communal viewing.

In other words, viewers are not enjoying the full benefits of the higher pixel count of 1080p televisions if they sit any further back than 1.8 times the screen width. At a distance of 2.7 times the screen width, they might as well buy a cheaper 720p set, as the eye cannot resolve the finer detail of a 1080p screen at that distance.

The next choice that must be made is between plasma display, liquid-crystal display (LCD) or the latest light-emitting diode (LED) variety. Plasmas, with their rapid switching and deep blacks, have long been the favourite for sports fans and movie buffs. Apart from their lack of blur and judder when tracking fast-moving objects and their freedom from wishy-washy greys, they can be viewed from wider angles than LCDs without the picture changing colour. But plasmas have lately fallen out of favour because they are bulkier and more power-hungry.

To lick the LCD’s motion problems, manufacturers have developed special circuitry to predict and compensate for any rapid movement within a scene. This increases the screen’s frame rate from the 60 hertz (Hz) of conventional television to 120Hz and even 240Hz. A few manufacturers have begun offering sets with refresh rates of up to 480Hz, with 960Hz on the horizon. Unfortunately, the motion-compensating circuitry can make filmed content look like a cheap video—a glitch known in the trade as the “soap-opera effect”. The source of the problem is the way film shot at 24 frames a second has to adjust to the television’s much higher refresh rate of 60, 120 or even 240 frames a second.

One way of doing this is to analyse first one frame of film and then the next, and calculate an average of the two. This interpolated frame is inserted between the first and second frames, and the process repeated for each successive frame of the film. The interpolation process is good at removing blur and judder, but it can make the motion appear unnaturally smooth and disconcerting. Be warned: 240Hz sets are the worst offenders. For sports fans in particular, this gives plasma the edge.

Lastly, there are the LED sets. These are simply LCD televisions that use LEDs for backlighting instead of the usual fluorescent tubes. The LEDs can be either along the edges of the screen or spread as an array behind the whole of the display. Edge-lit displays have problems with uniformity of brightness, as well as a limited viewing angle. Apart from giving more uniform brightness, a full array of LED backlights allows the screen to be dimmed selectively in places where a scene needs to be dark. The effect is to make the LCD’s blacks appear almost as dense as a plasma’s. Only top-of-the-range LCD sets from Sharp and Sony currently have this feature. Expect to pay dearly for it.

2D or not 2D, that is the question

So, what to choose? All things being equal, plasma televisions are about two-thirds the price of their LCD equivalents, which are themselves up to a third cheaper than LED sets. Meanwhile, the premium that 3D sets once commanded has all but vanished. They are now worth buying, not so much for their ability to show 3D content, but because they display 2D even better than conventional plasma or LCD sets. 3D sets have special features to reduce “ghosting” in the image and maximise the 3D effect—and this ensures sharper 2D images, too. Happy viewing.

How to balance your pool water

 

 

Langelier Saturation Index Calculator

This calculator requires the use of Javascript enabled and capable browsers. This script determines water balance calculations. Once you have measured the various parameters below, you can use this convenient Langelier Saturation Index calculator to determine whether your water is corrosive, scale forming or nicely balanced. If the water is corrosive, the water will try to saturate itself by dissolving the surface composition structure of your pool. If it is scale forming it will try to correct its over saturation by precipitating the hard water salts causing cloudy water and eventually deposit scale on pool components. Saturation Index = pH + calchd + totak + tmpc - 12.1 In the above formula: calchd is the Calcium Hardness factor. Optimum range 75 to 150 mg/liter. totak is the Total Alkalinity factor. Optimum range 100 to 150 mg/liter. tmpc is the Temperature in Degrees Centigrade. Suggested water temperature is between 27 and 29.5 Degrees C in commercial pools. pH. Optimum range 7.2 to 7.6. If the result of this calculation is zero, the target goal, then the water is balanced. If the answer is less than 0, the water leans toward being corrosive. If it is greater than 0, then it is indicative of scale forming. An acceptable range is -0.5 to +0.5, with the optimum goal of 0 (zero). If the result is outside this range, adjustments should be made to the hardness, alkalinity and pH to bring it as close to zero as possible and ideally within the optimum ranges shown above. Be aware however, that while the water may be balanced from a corrosion and scaling point of view it does not necessarily mean that it is ideal for chemical efficiency and bather comfort.

What are the tools needed for a complete electronics workbench?

DIY Essentials

Does your do-it-yourself workbench have everything you need?

By James Turner  /  August 2011

All Photos: Randi Silberman Klett

Click on image for enlargement.

 

What are the tools every hands-on projecteer needs? To answer that question, we went right to DIYers themselves, specifically the exhibitors at last fall's World Maker Faire NY event.

One tool everyone agreed on is a Multimeter. It's surprising how much information you can glean from a simple resistance reading or by checking out the voltage drop across a series of LEDs. Basic analog meters start at around US $15, but consider getting one with a digital display and an audible continuity tester. When you're up to your arms inside a chassis probing a pair of contacts, you don't want to keep looking away just to see if you have continuity between two points. You'll also want a variety of ends for the probes, such as alligator clips and PC board lead hooks.

Next you'll want a Soldering Iron. Some of the Maker Faire geeks didn't look for much more than the simple ones that cost less than $10, but others wanted the flexibility that a digitally controlled soldering station brings ($80; more for a name brand such as Weller). With advanced projects, you may need to vary the iron temperature depending on your components.

Sometimes, though, you just need a lot of heat, especially when soldering a large component or a thick wire. A conventional iron can't heat a large mass of metal quickly enough. Casey Haskell of Sparkfun Electronics likes to have a propane-powered pen iron for its portability, while others prefer a high-watt soldering gun.

Some of the Makers have moved beyond "through-hole" PC boards and now like to work with surface-mount devices. The "right" way to reflow solder for SMDs is using a purpose-made oven, but many a brave adventurer has gotten by with a toaster oven and some TLC. You can also use a hot-air gun or a hot-air pencil, which lets you do SMD one component at a time. Justin Huynh, who hacks remote-controlled cars with Arduinos, the popular DIY microcontrollers, uses this technique as well as a variable-temperature Weller. "I've always used the Wellers," he says. "My friends who are engineers use them. They just work really well."

Along with an iron, you'll want to have a way to desolder, for those inevitable missteps. Some people like to use desoldering braid; others like Desoldering Irons with suction bulbs. I've used both, and I find the irons do a better job with less heating of the components.

Most of us start out using batteries or cannibalizing power adapters, but a good bench Power Supply lets you control voltages precisely as well as measure and limit the amperage flowing through the circuit. You can get a reasonable single-voltage supply for $120 or so, such as the 18-volt, 3-ampere supply made by Extech Instruments. More advanced ones will offer multiple controllable voltages, useful when projects have more than one input voltage.

A bench supply goes well with a large Protoboard, one that supports multiple supply voltages and has lots of real estate to lay out chips. If you do a quick proof of concept on a protoboard first, you can save yourself a lot of grief when you try to set out a permanent version (or send it out to a printed-circuit-board fab).

Haskell notes that no good workbench should be without a few nonelectrical items as well, such as Calipers. "I use them constantly," he says. They're especially critical when you start to lay out circuits in close quarters, such as inside an enclosure. Another go-to item is a good hot Glue Gun. This is not to be confused with a craft glue gun, which uses low-temperature glue sticks. An industrial gun melts at a much higher temperature, and the material is nearly as hard as plastic when it cools. Haskell has another nontraditional tool in his bag of tricks. "A bag of LEDs is really helpful," he says. "It's a good way to see if something is getting power."

So far, we've been talking about items that you can get for around $100. Of the Makers I spoke to who could afford one, the next tool they went for was an Oscilloscope. A good one, such as a 40-megahertz Tektronix, can cost $950, and the prices rise quickly from there. Huynh says that his group had to pool their money to afford even a used one, a common strategy for hobbyists.

There's one other big-ticket item most makers yearn for. "We'd love to have a Logic Analyzer for working with chips," says Huynh, "but it's kind of pricey." A good one (better than the portable unit shown here) is invaluable, especially if you need to look at several seconds of history.

Haskell says that if money were no option, his next purchase would be either a desktop computer numerical control machine or a 3-D Printer. As it turns out, desktop CNC machines are coming down in price quickly; there are designs available for under $500 at this point. And 3-D printers are selling for less as well, some piggybacking on top of the new CNC platforms.

The nice thing about getting a workbench together is that you can do it gradually. That's why it's often worth spending a bit more to get the item you really want. There's nothing worse than having to buy something better six months down the road. Shop with care, consider used equipment, and before you know it, you'll be ready to tackle just about any project you can imagine.

About the Author

James Turner is a contributing editor for O’Reilly Media, a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, and a regular contributor to IEEE Spectrum. Next month he’ll describe how to build a high-quality, low-cost oscilloscope using an iPad.

To Probe Further

For the back story about IEEE Spectrum photo editor Randi Silberman Klett being scanned in 3-D, see the sidebar, "A 3-D Me."

What are the Top 10 Programming Languages?

The Top 10 Programming Languages

They're mostly ones you'd expect'and then there's Lua

By Ritchie S. King in IEEE Spectrum magazine /  October 2011

Click the image to enlarge.

Listing programming languages is easy—Wikipedia's page has more than 600 entries—but ranking them by popularity is hard. As David Welton, curator of the site LangPop.com, points out, you can't send out a horde of researchers to look over programmers' shoulders and note what languages they're coding in. So you have to get at it indirectly.

To do that, you can search the Web and find numbers to use as a proxy. And you can tailor the search to target different kinds of popularity: Which languages are the most sought after in the job market? Check a job site. Which are used by elite programmers? Look in on their chat sessions. How established is a language? Visit an online bookstore—new and esoteric languages don't have many reference books dedicated to them.
The data here come in part from TIOBE, a software research firm based in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The analysts there produce an aggregate index each month. I also looked at Welton's LangPop.com, which shows the results of individual searches, such as on Craigslist, Internet Relay Chat, and Powell's Books.

Generally speaking, the languages being talked about by programmers online aren't quite the same as the ones at the top of the TIOBE Index or those that have spawned a lot of book titles (C++ is an exception). The most sought after by employers seem to be PHP, a language used in Web development, and SQL, which is used for writing database queries. No surprises there.

What has been interesting in recent years is the rise of JavaScript for writing Web-based applications that connect users to databases—think Gmail. In fact, JavaScript's ascent is largely due to Google's creation of the V8 JavaScript engine, a speedy compiler that powers its Chrome browser.

And then there's Objective-C, which underlies Mac OS and iOS and was barely in TIOBE's top 40 in 2008. But since then, it's climbed rapidly in popularity because people have been using it to write apps for the iPhone and iPad.

About the Author

Ritchie S. King formerly dealt with numbers full-time as a chemical process engineer. Unlike most engineers, though, he enjoyed writing reports and making charts more than any other aspect of the job. In 2009, King decided to make writing about science and technology a full-time gig. He landed an internship at Spectrum this past summer and is currently finishing journalism grad school and interning at The New York Times.

SOURCES: TIOBE, LangPop.com. Because of rounding, categories may not total 100 percent.
© 2011 IEEE Spectrum magazine

How to sit correctly at your computer.

Sitting correctly at your computer, by Jennifer Nelson

Hands.  Keep your arms by your sides and position bent elbows slightly higher than your wrists, and your wrists slightly above your hands.  Wrists should be in a neutral position.  You want to be an arm's length from the screen with the keyboard directly in front of you.  The keyboard should be 2 inches above your thighs.

Feet.  Keep your feet flat on the floor in front of you, hips' width apart, with knees bent at a little more than a right angle.  Keep an inch or two between your knees and the seat to allow for better blood circulation.


Chair.  Sit so your thighs are horizontal, with your hips slightly higher than your knees.  Keep your knees hips' distance apart (do not cross your legs or ankles).  A 100- to 110- degree reclined angle in the chair (rather than a 90-degree angle) may be more comfortable.  Rest your forearms so your shoulders are relaxed.

Monitor.  Place your monitor so your eyes, looking straight ahead, are between the center and the top of the screen with your chin parallel to the floor.


Head.  Your head should be in alignment with your back, not leaning forward.  Position your shoulders over your hips and your ears over your shoulders.

What are the things to consider before buying an all-electric vehicle?

Going Electric: Things to Consider

What you should know before you buy an all-electric vehicle

By KATHY KOWALENKO 9 September 2011

Ford says its Focus Electric can go 160 kilometers with a full charge.

Photo: Ford Motor Co. 

There’s a lot of excitement about those new all-electric automobiles, but you may experience several drawbacks if you do buy one, according to Saifur Rahman, an IEEE Fellow and director of Virginia Tech’s Advanced Research Institute, in Arlington. For instance, several electric vehicles on one residential street can contribute to a brownout or even a blackout by overloading the local distribution transformer. If you are on the road, you may find it difficult to recharge your vehicle because even though EV charging stations are being built, they are still few and far between. And there are significant environmental concerns about the disposal of used up EV batteries in landfills. 


TRANSFORMER TROUBLE


Buy an all-electric and you may also have to pay for a home charging station to recharge your battery. The stations come in three varieties. A Level 1 charger plugs into a regular 110/120-volt, 20-ampere outlet. But it may take longer than one night to do its job. Anywhere from 10 to 21 hours is more like it, depending on the car model and the battery.


A Level 2 unit is heftier, a dedicated 220/240-V, 40-A unit that must be installed by an electrician. This is the type EV automakers recommend you use. It could take about three hours to charge a battery that’s half depleted and about eight hours to charge a battery that’s dead, depending on the car model. Rahman estimates a Level 2 charger will cost about US $2000 in the United States, plus the electrician’s fee.


Level 3 chargers will go into the quick-charging, 480-V stations that owners of all-electrics hope will be popping up everywhere. Chargers at such stations could bring a half-charged EV battery to full capacity in 10 to 30 minutes. Such setups, said to be in the planning stages in many cities, will be the “gas stations” for all-electrics.


But if your neighborhood has too many all-electrics plugged in and if no load-control programs are added, there is a chance the local transformers could be overloaded. Most pole-mounted transformers in the United States are rated at 50 000 volt-amperes (50 kVA) and typically serve four to eight homes. At any time, each home could be pulling in about 8 kilowatts, but plug in two or three EVs drawing 5 kW or more each, turn on a few 240-V appliances such as air conditioners, electric ovens, or clothes dryers—each of which draws from 5 to 7 kW—and you and your neighbors could be sitting in the dark.


“The impact of electric vehicles will be felt at the local distribution point—the home,” says Rahman, who does see a bright side. “Because the number of EV owners will be small at first and spread across different time zones, transmission- or generation-level overloads will not be a problem, as some claim.”


Installing larger pole-mounted transformers providing 100 kVA or more could help. Installed, each of these would cost several thousand dollars, but the question is, Who will pay for that? It’s unreasonable to ask consumers without an EV to come up with the money, Rahman says. Nor is it feasible to ask the few initial electric car owners. Rahman suggests that rather than upgrading the transformer, it makes more sense to add a control device on each charging station that turns off other 240-V appliances in the home when the EV needs to be charged, or delay charging the car.


“This station could be made intelligent enough to sense when other 240-V devices are running,” he explains. “If it senses two appliances are on and there’s not enough capacity in the transformer, it will either turn off the appliances or not charge the car. This will make the electric car transparent to the power company.” Such a feature, he says, could be added at a small cost.


CHARGING DILEMMA


Another problem is finding a place to put the charging station. If you live in a house with a garage, charging your car should be relatively simple. But you’ll have a real problem if you live in an apartment or town house and don’t have an assigned parking spot with room for a charging station.


The options are limited. A Level 2 home charging station would be hard-wired to your house, so you couldn’t take it with you to your sister’s or bring it to your workplace and plug in your car. That means you’ll probably need a public charging station. These will be expensive, so don’t expect to see them anytime soon in public garages, in your company parking lot, or sprouting along highways. Public stations will require a new infrastructure, involving 240-V lines with several hundred amperes of spare capacity for EVs—which might not always be available. A roadway station that can charge four to eight EVs at a time could cost upward of $25 000 to build, Rahman says.


“Running the lines costs money, and existing garages may not have the physical space and/or spare electrical capacity to add stations,” says Rahman, who calls building such stations “a significant bottleneck” to EV sales, one that will likely be overcome only by government incentives.


The slow speed of charging the battery will also affect the infrastructure, with cars potentially tying up Level 2 charging stations for several hours, though it’s expected that the roadway stations will use 480 V.


BATTERY BRIEFING


Cars such as the Chevrolet Volt, Ford Focus Electric [below], and Nissan Leaf warranty their proprietary battery packs for eight years or 161 000 km, whichever comes first. The Volt relies on a 16-kilowatt-hour manganese spinel lithium-polymer prismatic battery pack for its 64-km range. The Leaf uses a 24-kWh lithium-nickel-manganese polymer battery for a 160-km range. The Focus Electric can go 160 km with its 23-kWh lithium-ion battery pack.


But battery capability fades with time. A battery delivers less range after a couple of thousand charge-discharge cycles. Battery life is also affected by how people drive, whether the battery is charged in minutes or hours, and the climate. An EV’s range will decrease as it ages—and the more aggressively it is driven, the faster that happens.


As the batteries are improved, they could last 10 years, longer than the life of many vehicles. But replacing a failed battery could cost from $3000 to $12 000, depending on the car model.


“And if your battery goes dead, you can’t simply run to your local garage for a replacement,” Rahman points out.


Then there’s the dilemma of what to do with spent batteries. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, rechargeable batteries are not an environmental hazard if they are not dumped in landfills. But the European Union has a battery recycling law requiring vendors to reclaim for recycling at least a quarter of the batteries they manufacture and sell, including lithium-ion. 


“Because the ion of lithium is not a benign metal, it will have an impact on the environment,” Rahman says. 

As the EV batteries age, their ability to hold charge will diminish, but they can still be useful in homes and offices as backup sources of electricity, Rahman points out. “For example, if homeowners or small businesses want to have high-quality power for short durations (maybe several hours) for whatever reason or to avoid peaking charges by not using as much electricity when the power company faces supply crises, these discarded EV batteries can meet those needs. As these opportunities are identified and the value of such applications are realized, a secondary market will grow to trade for such batteries.”


Is it possible to power the world just using Wind, Water, and Solar technologies?

Wind, Water, and Solar Power for the World

Nix nuclear. Chuck coal. Rebuff biofuel. All we need is the wind, the water, and the sun

By Mark Delucchi  /  September 2011

Illustration: iStockphoto

We don’t need nuclear power, coal, or biofuels. We can get 100 percent of our energy from wind, water, and solar (WWS) power. And we can do it today—efficiently, reliably, safely, sustainably, and economically.

We can get to this WWS world by simply building a lot of new systems for the production, transmission, and use of energy. One scenario that Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson and I developed, projecting to 2030, includes:

• 3.8 million wind turbines, 5 megawatts each, supplying 50 percent of the projected total global power demand
• 49 000 solar thermal power plants, 300 MW each, supplying 20 percent
• 40 000 solar photovoltaic (PV) power plants supplying 14 percent
• 1.7 billion rooftop PV systems, 3 kilowatts each, supplying 6 percent
• 5350 geothermal power plants, 100 MW each, supplying 4 percent
• 900 hydroelectric power plants, 1300 MW each, of which 70 percent are already in place, supplying 4 percent
• 720 000 ocean-wave devices, 0.75 MW each, supplying 1 percent
• 490 000 tidal turbines, 1 MW each, supplying 1 percent.

We also need to greatly expand the transmission infrastructure in order to create the large supergrids that will span many regions and often several countries and even continents. And we need to expand production of battery-electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, ships that run on hydrogen fuel cell and battery combinations, liquefied hydrogen aircraft, air- and ground-source heat pumps, electric resistance heating, and hydrogen for high-temperature processes.

To make a WWS world work, we also need to reduce demand. Reducing demand by improving the efficiency of devices that use power, or substituting low-energy activities and technologies for high-energy ones—for example, telecommuting instead of driving—directly reduces the pressure to produce energy.

Because a massive deployment of WWS technologies requires an upgraded and expanded transmission grid and the smart integration of the grid with battery-electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles—using both types of these vehicles for distributed electricity storage—governments need to carefully fund, plan, and manage a long-term, large-scale restructuring of the electricity transmission and distribution system. In much of the world, we’ll need international cooperation in planning and building supergrids that span across multiple countries, because many individual countries just aren’t big enough to permit enough geographic dispersion of generators to mitigate local variability in wind and solar intensity. The Desertec project proposes a supergrid to link Europe and North Africa, and 10 northern European countries are beginning to plan a North Sea supergrid for offshore wind power. Africa, Asia and Southeast Asia, Australia/Tasmania, China, the Middle East, North America, South America, and Russia will need supergrids as well.

Although this is an enormous undertaking, it does not need to be done overnight, and there are plenty of examples in recent history of successful large-scale infrastructure, industrial, and engineering projects.

During World War II, the United States transformed motor vehicle production facilities to produce over 300 000 aircraft, and the rest of the world was able to produce over 500 000 aircraft. In 1956, the United States began work on the Interstate Highway System, which now extends for about 47 000 miles (around 75 000 kilometers) and is considered one of the largest public works project in history. The iconic Apollo program, widely considered one of the greatest engineering and technological accomplishments ever, put a man on the moon in less than 10 years. Although these projects obviously differ in important economic, political, and technical ways from the project we discuss, they do suggest that the large scale of a complete transformation of the energy system is not in itself an insurmountable barrier.

Efficient and Reliable: A 100-percent wind, water, and solar power system can deliver all of the world’s energy needs efficiently. Jacobson and I estimated the potential supply and compared those estimates with projections of energy demand made by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. We calculated that the amount of wind power and solar power available in locations that can likely be developed around the world, excluding Antarctica, exceeds the projected world demand for power in 2030 for all purposes by more than an order of magnitude. On top of that, Jacobson and I estimate that converting to a WWS energy infrastructure can actually reduce world power demand by more than 30 percent (based on projected energy consumption in the year 2030), primarily because electric motors have less energy loss than do combustion devices.

But, the naysayers will retort, what about reliability? Can these resources deliver power reliably? Indeed they can. While it is true that no single wind-power farm or solar-photovoltaic installation can reliably match total power demand in a region, it is also true—and often not recognized—that no individual coal or nuclear plant can either.

Indeed, any electricity system must be able to respond to changes in demand over seconds, minutes, hours, seasons, and years, and must be able to accommodate unanticipated changes in the availability of generation due to outages, for example. Today’s mainly fossil-fuel electricity system responds with backup systems, power plants brought online only during periods of peak demand, and spinning reserves—that is, the extra generating capacity available by increasing the power output from already operating generators.

A WWS electricity system handles changes in demand far differently. To start with, WWS technologies generally suffer less downtime than do current electric power technologies. However, they face inherently more variability; the maximum solar or wind power available at a single location varies over minutes, hours, and days, and this variation generally does not match the demand pattern over the same timescales.

Dealing with this short-term variability can be challenging, but it is doable. Including hydropower—which is relatively easy to turn on and off as needed—in the generating package helps, as does managing demand (for example, by shifting flexible loads to times when more generating capacity is available) and forecasting weather more precisely; these have little or no additional cost. A WWS system also needs to interconnect resources over wide regions, creating a supergrid that can span continents. And it will probably need to have decentralized energy storage in residences, using batteries in electric vehicles. Finally, WWS generation capacity should significantly exceed the maximum amount of demand in order to minimize the times when available WWS power runs short. Most of the time, this excess generation capacity could be used to provide power to produce hydrogen for end uses not well served by direct electric power, such as some kinds of marine, rail, off-road, and heavy-duty truck transport.

Photo: iStockphoto

Economical and Safe: WWS power is economical. The private cost of generating electricity from onshore wind power is already less than the private cost of conventional fossil-fuel generation and is likely to be even lower in the future—less than US $0.05 per kilowatt-hour including some transmission costs, according to our calculations (this includes the fully amortized cost of capital and land).

By 2030, Jacobson and I estimate that the social cost (which includes the private or consumer cost, plus additional external costs: for example, the value of health damage from air pollution, which society bears but the individual consumer does not) of generating electricity from any WWS power source is likely to be less than the social cost of conventional fossil-fuel generation, and that includes the amortized cost of land acquisition, capital, and construction.

The cost of transmitting and managing—as opposed to generating—electricity will probably be somewhat higher in a wind, water, and solar system than in a conventional electricity system. In an intelligently designed and operated WWS system, the extra infrastructure and energy cost of sending electricity long distances over a supergrid and of vehicle-to-grid storage, along with demand management, hydropower, and weather forecasting, will probably add up to an average of $0.02/kWh generated. By comparison, conventional long-distance transmissions in the United States today cost about $0.01/kWh.

We don’t have to worry too much about the costs of the basic construction materials, because the supply of steel and concrete used in a wind, water, or solar power system is virtually unlimited—these materials are abundant and recyclable. The rarer materials, including neodymium (in electric motors and generators), platinum (in fuel cells), lithium (in batteries), and silver, tellurium, indium, and germanium (in different kinds of photovoltaic systems), are harder to get, more expensive, and limited in supply, so they will have to be reduced, recycled, or eventually replaced with less-scarce materials unless new sources emerge. However, the cost of reducing, recycling, or replacing neodymium, platinum, or the materials for photovoltaics is not likely to noticeably affect the economics of WWS systems.

WWS power is safe and sustainable. Wind, water, and solar power have essentially zero emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants over the whole life cycle of their systems. They do little to hurt wildlife, water quality, and terrestrial ecosystems; they are not catastrophic disasters waiting to happen in terms of waste disposal, terrorism, war, human error, or natural disasters; and they are based on natural resources and materials that are indefinitely renewable or recyclable.

Nuclear power, coal, and biofuels are anything but safe and sustainable. Biofuels and so-called clean coal systems still cause air pollution, water pollution, habitat destruction, and climate change; biofuels also contribute to higher food prices. Nuclear power already has had two catastrophic accidents, and even though the industry has improved the safety and performance of new reactors and has proposed even newer (but largely untested) ”inherently safe” reactor designs, the industry can’t guarantee that the reactors will be designed, built, and operated correctly. And catastrophic scenarios involving terrorist attacks are still conceivable. Furthermore, any nuclear-fuel cycle can contribute, even if very indirectly, to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

With a wind-water-solar system, the risk of any such catastrophe is zero.

Finally, though critics envision sprawling solar installations or rows of wind turbines crowding out farms, a WWS power system won’t take a lot of land. The equivalent footprint area on the ground for enough WWS devices needed to power the world is about 0.74 percent of the global land area, and the spacing needed around wind turbines adds about 1.16 percent of global land area. However, the land used for such spacing is available for other purposes, including agriculture, ranching, and open space, and so is not ”used” in the way that land for biomass production or coal mining is used. Moreover, if we assume that one-half of wind devices will be placed over water, and recognize that all wave and tidal devices will be in water, that 70 percent of hydroelectric is already developed, and that rooftop solar power doesn’t require new land, then the additional footprint and spacing of devices on land will be only about 0.41 percent and 0.59 percent of the world land area, respectively.

The more extensive the supergrid, the less local fluctuations in power generation are a problem. However, more energy is lost in transmission, and infrastructure costs climb. Figuring out how to balance these factors in order to design the optimal grid and determine the best location of generation facilities will take additional research.

Getting in our way today is the fact that energy markets, institutions, and government policies support the production and use of fossil fuels. The world needs new policies to ensure that WWS systems develop quickly and broadly. The United States and other countries have adopted or discussed policies that stimulate production of renewable energy, including feed-in tariffs, which are subsidies to cover the difference between generation costs and wholesale electricity prices, investment subsidies, quotas requiring that a certain amount of generation be WWS power, and carbon and other environmental-damage taxes.

The obstacles to this transformation are primarily social and political, not technical or economic. If we continue to make decisions based on interest-group politics and muddle through with nuclear power, ”clean” coal, offshore oil production, and biofuels, then our energy system will continue to threaten the health and well-being of everyone on the planet. But with sensible broad-based policies and social changes, it indeed is possible to convert 25 percent of the current energy system to WWS in 10 to 15 years, 85 percent in 20 to 30 years, and 100 percent by 2050.

About the Author

Mark Delucchi is a research scientist at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, specializing in economic, environmental, engineering, and planning analyses of current and future transportation systems. He is a member of the Alternative Fuels Committee and the Energy Committee of the Transportation Research Board.

To Probe Further

The material for this article is based on the detailed analyses presented in ”Providing All Global Energy With Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part II: Reliability, System and Transmission Costs, and Policies,” Energy Policy 39 (2011): 1170–1190 by M.A. Delucchi and M.Z. Jacobson, and
”Providing All Global Energy With Wind, Water, and Solar Power, Part I: Technologies, Energy Resources, Quantities and Areas of Infrastructure, and Materials,” Energy Policy 39 (2011): 1154–1169 by M.Z. Jacobson and M.A. Delucchi.

Copies of these papers are available from the author upon request by e-mail (madelucchi@ucdavis.edu).

How to protect yourself when using free public WiFi connections

How to minimize the risks of using free public WiFi hot spots

Surfing the Internet with a public WiFi connection can expose your laptop or tablet computer to digital eavesdroppers and malicious hackers. Here are some ways to protect yourself.

By Salvador Rodriguez

September 22, 2011

It seems you can surf the Internet and check your email from virtually anywhere these days — in coffee shops, hotel lobbies, airport terminals and airplane cabins.

More places are making it easier to turn on your laptop or tablet computer and connect to the Internet through free public WiFi hot spots.

But much like leaving your diary on a park bench, connecting to the Internet using a public WiFi allows anyone with the right software to see what you are doing. Worse, you risk being hit with malware and other virulent programs that can turn your computer into botnets controlled by hackers to attack websites.

Here are some tips to protect your computer from digital eavesdroppers and malicious hackers:

Before you leave home…

Enable SSL connections: One of the most effective ways you can to protect your Web surfing is to use secure connections. As you probably have noticed whenever you log into your bank's website, your browser displays a lock icon or adjusts the URL bar. This is your browser indicating that you are visiting the website over a Secure Sockets Layer, or SSL, connection. An SSL connection encrypts the information exchanged between you and your bank, keeping others out.

SSL connections are usually enabled for bank websites and other sites that hold sensitive information, but they can be costly for large companies, which is why many don't have them turned on automatically. But you can enable an SSL connection easily on many of your most used sites:

Gmail: Most people have a Gmail account nowadays for their email, and it's always important to make sure your emails are safe. To enable an SSL connection for your Gmail account, click on the gear icon at the top right of the page, click Mail Settings, select Always Use HTTPS, and save.

Twitter: Go to your settings, scroll to the bottom of the Account tab, check the box for Always Use HTTPS and save.

Facebook: Some people stay logged on to Facebook throughout the day, so making sure your connection is secure can go a long way. To switch on the SSL connection, go to Account Settings and click the Security tab. Once there, edit Secure Browsing and check the box that offers browsing on a secure connection. Unfortunately for heavy Facebook app users, you will have to disable this when you run programs such as FarmVille.

Disable sharing: People often enable sharing to connect with printers and other devices wirelessly. As useful as this can be at home, leaving sharing on in public areas is like leaving your door unlocked in a bad neighborhood. Here's how to turn it off:

For Macs, launch your system preferences and click on the Sharing icon. Uncheck all of the boxes to disable sharing. To turn them back on, simply check whatever you're going to use.

For PCs, Windows will ask you if you are connecting to a home, work or public network when you connect to a new WiFi network. If you select public, Windows will disable sharing for you. If you'd like to do this yourself on Windows XP and 7, click the Start button and launch the Control Panel.

Here is where the method changes depending on your version of Windows. For Windows XP, click on Network Connections and right-click Local Area Connection. Click Properties and from there uncheck the box that offers file and printer sharing and then click OK. Check it to enable file and printer sharing again. For Windows 7, click Network and Sharing Center, and select Change Advanced Sharing Settings on the left. Click on the arrow of the network you'd like to disable sharing on, select Turn Off File and Printer Sharing, and save.

Turn off WiFi: One more precaution you can take is to turn off your WiFi before heading out to avoid having your computer latch on to an unsafe network on its own.

For Macs, click the WiFi icon on the top right corner called Airport. Select Turn Airport Off.

For PCs, right-click the wireless icon on the task bar and turn it off.

Once you're there….

Turn on WiFi: Follow the same steps to turn your WiFi on when you arrive at your destination and select the desired network.

Log in using a VPN: If you can log into a virtual private network, your online experience will be that much safer. Most companies give employees with network access at the office a way to log into the company VPN from outside. Enabling the company VPN will encrypt your browsing and work as a shield.

If you don't work for a company or have access to the company VPN, you can buy a VPN account with a third party. This will give you that same protection and encrypt your activity. Prices range from $8 to $10 a month.

Once you leave…

Turn off WiFi: Should you go to another public spot, this will prevent the computer from automatically connecting to an unsecured network.

business@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

Which companies offer free storage space in the cloud?

    

No Money? No Problem: 15 Free Cloud Storage Offerings

By Andrew R Hickey, CRN
4:00 PM EST Thu. Sep. 15, 2011

4Shared

Online file-sharing player 4Shared has been around for about 6 years, but it just recently unveiled 15 GB of free cloud storage. You get 10 GB for free, and 5 GB more if you verify your e-mail address. And each file must be no larger than 2 GB. 4Shared lets users set permissions for folders, meaning saved content can be private or shared and more rules and policies can be set to determine which users see which files and which can upload their own data.

Microsoft Windows Live SkyDrive

With 25 GB of free online storage, Microsoft Windows Live SkyDrive lets users upload files, photos and other content to the cloud to be accessed from anywhere. SkyDrive also hypes its ability to share and collaborate on content in the cloud. In-e-mail and social network sharing are two key components for SkyDrive, through which users can upload and share documents and photos with people or groups via e-mail or links. SkyDrive also works with Office Web Apps to let users create, edit, view and share Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files online. And SkyDrive boasts powerful permission settings to ensure content can only be viewed by who users want viewing it.

Dropbox

Dropbox has made a name for itself on the free cloud storage game, offering 2 GB of cloud drive space for life. More space can be purchased via a monthly plan. Dropbox bills itself as a hip service that lets users upload photos, docs and videos and take them anywhere on all computers and devices. Users can share folders and send links. And, like a time machine, Dropbox lets users undo mistakes and undelete accidentally trashed files

SugarSync

SugarSync is a major up-and-comer in the cloud storage arena, and its offer of 5 GB of free cloud storage, with no credit card required, is driving its success. SugarSync calls itself a provider of "personal cloud services," which let users access their data anytime, anywhere and from any devices. Mobile users can backup, sync, access and share all files on the go from nearly any type of device. Meanwhile, SugarSync users can sync files in any folder and access and share those files via the cloud. File sharing and collaboration tools let users share any folder or file with a URL on social networks, in e-mail, via instant message or more.

Box.net

Box.net is a cloud storage mainstay, but to entice newbies to the platform, the company is generous with its free space, offering a 5 GB cloud drive for free that allows files from 25 MB up to 1 GB each. The free version of Box.net, dubbed the personal plan, also enables file-sharing links and mobile app access.

Symform

As if the 100 GB free and clear from Symform wasn't enough, the Seattle-based cloud storage player has upped the ante and is offering up to 200 GB free. Users can get the additional 100 GB by referring other users, at 10 GB free per referral, and by getting fully configured within the first 20 hours, which adds another 20 GB.

Memopal

Memopal ponies up 3 GB of cloud storage and online backup for free. The Memopal software performs automatic and continuous file saving to a remote server through a secure Web connection, and according to the company, any files can be protected to prevent corruption, malfunctions, theft or human error. With Memopal, files can be accessed from any Web connection or smartphone. Users decide what to save and back up automatically and in-real time and data is sent over the network with 128 bit encryption.

Google Docs

Google offers 1 GB of free storage via Google Docs for uploaded files or folders. According to Google, only files a user has uploaded and hasn't converted to Google Docs format will count toward the minimum storage limit, meaning Google Docs formatted documents are free and don't count against the 1 GB. Additionally, Google said that files and documents that have been shared with a Google Docs user also won't count against the maximum storage limit.

Amazon Cloud Drive

When Amazon launched Amazon Cloud Drive earlier this year, it also unveiled 5 GB of free storage to go along with it. According to Amazon, that 5 GB is enough to store 1,000 songs, 2,000 photos or 20 minutes of HD video. Amazon Cloud Drive boasts unlimited, secure access from any Internet connection. And songs or albums purchased directly from the Amazon MP3 Store don't count against the Cloud Drive storage limit.

ZumoDrive

ZumoDrive keeps it simple. It offers 2 GB of free cloud storage. It supports multiple languages. And ZumoDrive works with Windows, Mac and Linux. It also works on a host of smartphone platforms. No fuss. No muss. Free storage.

Ubuntu One

Compatible with Windows and Ubuntu, Ubuntu One is a personal cloud service that offers its sync services and 5 GB of storage for free. Its suite of cloud services, which includes storage, sync, sharing and streaming gives users access to music, photos, videos, documents and more from any device at any time. Ubuntu One is operated by Canonical Ltd.

ADrive

With a whopping 50 GB of free cloud storage, ADrive offers one of the more generous amounts of cloud drive capacity with its basic edition. Along with 50 GB free, ADrive gives users universal access, file sharing, folder/directory upload, file download, search, remote file transfer, international character support and Zoho Editor for no additional charge.

TeamDrive

Based in Germany and with support for English and German, TeamDrive gives users 2 GB of free cloud space on Windows, Mac and Linux devices. Along with that 2 GB users get free unlimited multiple server support through TeamDrive CloudServer, TeamDrive PersonalServer and WebDAV Serve. As an added incentive, TeamDrive users can get a total of 8 GB of free space if they refer new users. For each new user referred, TeamDrive gives an additional 250 MB at no cost.

SpiderOak

SpiderOak offers 2 GB of free storage and recently launched an iOS app to be used on Apple iPhones and iPad. Additionally, the free service works on Windows, Mac, Linux and Google Android devices to give users a free cloud drive.

OpenDrive

OpenDrive delivers 5 GB of free cloud storage, but goes well-beyond that by enabling files up to 100 MB, 1 GB per day of bandwidth, direct linking, unlimited computer access and watermarking. All for the price of $0.00.